A political candidate running in Britain’s general election appears to have been dropped by the Labour Party over her activity on social media, with one of her alleged transgressions relating to a like on a post containing a Jon Stewart sketch—prompting the comedian to weigh in in her defense on Wednesday night.
Faiza Shaheen, a socialist academic who has been likened in the U.K. media to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been banned from standing for Labour to contest a parliamentary seat in London, a party source told The Evening Standard. Her reported ouster comes as Labour—which is widely expected to defeat the ruling Conservatives in the July 4 election—continues to try and convince the electorate it has transformed since the departure of its former leader Jeremy Corbyn whose tenure was mired by allegations of antisemitism within the party. People on the left of the party have described it as a purge.
The row involving Shaheen began with reports in Britain’s rightwing press alleging that she had liked a post on X which said that anyone who said anything “even mildly critical of Israel” is “immediately assailed by scores of hysterical people” who will make claims of antisemitism. The post also said such people are “mobilized by professional organizations” and talked about “the Israel lobby.”
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The post also contained a clip from a Jon Stewart sketch in which he is repeatedly shouted down while trying to talk about Israel and its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Appearing on the BBC’s Newsnight on Wednesday, a visibly distressed Shaheen said she’d been called to a meeting the day before to discuss “14 tweets since 2014” and had since been told her candidacy had been blocked, according to the broadcaster.
“They briefed the press before they even had the decency to call me,” Shaheen said, adding: “Honestly, I’m just so shocked right now to be treated this badly.”
Before the show aired, The Times reported that Labour was “poised to suspend” Shaheen for liking several tweets which dismissed antisemitism accusations, apparently including the one referring to “hysterical” people.
The report also claimed people close to Labour’s incumbent leader, Keir Starmer, were preparing to drop Shaheen after they were made aware of “other posts she liked or shared which variously expressed support for the Green Party, claimed Labour was ‘institutionally Islamophobic’ and accused Israel of genocide.”
According to The Guardian, one of the posts was one that Shaheen liked about “a friend being selected as a Green candidate in 2014,” before Shaheen was a Labour Party member, and another was about her own “experiences of Islamophobia in the party.”
Shaheen also said herself on Newsnight that she did not remember liking the post containing the Jon Stewart sketch and said she had liked it late at night. She did also acknowledge that “professional organizations” reference “plays into a trope, and I absolutely don’t agree with that and I’m sorry about that.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan brought the row to Stewart’s attention on X, saying Shaheen had “been suspended tonight from the Labour Party for liking on Twitter this old Israel video sketch of yours.” (Hasan later linked to the original post Shaheen allegedly liked rather than just the video itself. The Daily Beast has asked Labour if Shaheen has been suspended from the party as Hasan’s post claims, or if she is just no longer being supported as a candidate.)
“This is the dumbest thing The UK has done since electing Boris Johnson…what the actual fuck…” Stewart wrote in response to Hasan’s original post.
The dispute involving Shaheen comes amid a larger reckoning inside Labour about moving on from the Corbyn era and allegations of antisemitism within the party. Corbyn—who led the party to a crushing defeat in the 2019 general election—is now running as an independent candidate against Labour in the current election.
Corbyn was suspended from the party in 2020 after he claimed political opponents had “dramatically overstated” the scale of antisemitism in Labour. This week, he also agreed that it appears Starmer, his successor, is now trying to purge the left of the party and said he was “disturbed” by the treatment of veteran Labour lawmaker Diane Abbott.
Abbott, a close ally of Corbyn, was suspended as a Labour MP last year after she claimed that Jewish, Irish, and Traveller people don’t experience racism “all their lives.” She was reportedly readmitted to the party this week but has since claimed she has been “banned from running” for Labour in the looming election, a claim which the party leadership has denied.
